Housing Supply Forum publishes report and recommendations

The Department for Social Development’s Housing Supply Forum has published its Report and Recommendations on increasing housing supply in Northern Ireland.

The forum was established as part of the Northern Ireland Housing Strategy, and first met in January 2014. It is chaired by John Armstrong, the Managing Director of the Construction Employers Federation, and included representatives of the construction industry, financial institutions, academics and other housing professionals. Advisors from government departments also attended meetings of the forum.

The forum has offered eight recommendations, with the aim of utilising the expertise of the housing sector and government to improve housing supply.

Northern Ireland Housing Supply Forum recommendations

1. The Government should consider adopting a policy of “presumption in favour of sustainable development” in Northern Ireland. The Forum is concerned that the development of local development plans by the new councils will lead to delays in house-building. By introducing a presumption in favour of sustainable development to become active across the country on (for example) 1 April 2020, the Government can ensure greater consistency in the supply of identified housing need.
2. Publication and analysis of key performance information relating to Council planning decisions should be undertaken at regular intervals for each council area. This will provide all parties with certainty as to whether housing need is being satisfied.
3. Consideration should be given to completion of a mapping exercise overlapping demand with availability and zoning information, and to allowing the construction industry to have access to data on available public land. The new programme for government should include  a robust target to build an ambitious number of new homes on surplus public land. This should be facilitated by allowing house-builders access to this data, and allowing them to bid for land.
4. There should be increased encouragement and support from government for joint ventures between housing associations and private developers, including ‘design and build.’ This process could begin with the brokering of several pilot joint ventures, with a view to establishing numerous mixed-tenure, mixed-use developments which would have significant regeneration benefits.
5. Independent empirical research should be carried out with statutory authorities and the development community into housing delivery time-frames, in order to determine the actual time-frames being experienced. This will give clarity to all parties, and establish a baseline against which any improvements can be agreed.
6. Housing policy should encompass the sector as a whole, rather than its constituent parts. The forum expressed a strong view that the social and private housing sectors have been treated as separate entities by government; a balanced approach would lead to better policy, more certainty on demand, and consequently an increased likelihood of attracting funding.
7. Councils should be empowered to assemble new sites for the benefit of the whole community, and to ensure the appropriate delivery of housing need. This will result in well planned new developments with mixed tenure and appropriate infrastructure.
8. Consideration should be given to the methods used to calculate road & sewer bond values and timely release of bond capital, including investigation of possible alternative approaches which would still ensure a high standard of infrastructure. Road & sewer bonds have, in the forum’s view, become prohibitively difficult to source; any considerations should ensure that developers should have more capacity to increase their building.

The forum’s report has been presented to the Minister for Social Development, who will share the forum’s recommendations with ministers of the affected executive departments.

John Armstrong, the Chair of the Housing Supply Forum, has recently written for Housing Rights on the challenges of housing supply in Northern Ireland.